


Degenerated

by thisworldisawhore



Series: Teratoma [2]
Category: Lost Boys (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Biting, Bloodlust, But not the porn you're expecting, Coercion, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mind Control, PTSD, Power Dynamics, Rough Sex, Sibling Incest, Sorry Not Sorry, Vampires, Why Did I Write This?, Why am I quoting Batman?, also there's porn, what
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 09:37:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10659864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisworldisawhore/pseuds/thisworldisawhore
Summary: Because according to this Alan, the fragmented psyche that inhabits the skin of his brother, the only way to save your soul is to sell it.The only way to earn your freedom is to give it up.





	Degenerated

**Author's Note:**

> _there is an answer in a question_   
>  _and there is hope within despair_   
>  _and there is beauty in a failure_   
>  _and there are depths beyond compare._
> 
> _there is whiskey in the water_   
>  _and there is death upon the vine_   
>  _**and there is grace within forgiveness** _   
>  _**but it’s so hard for me to find.** _

There's the taste of redemption in nights like these. He can feel it sitting there like a church pew, right outside the salt circle, where if he'd just step he could be forgiven for crimes he never committed. He feels it tug at him, and he looks out the windows half expecting a whole congregation outside his camper. The light from the window over the sink is so distorted with the bend of the plexiglass, he imagines he can see the alter just outside the light's reach, but knows if anything it's the gleam of a coffin.

It's a cruel joke; while what he waits for is the end, death won't offer the reprieve. No, there's a price he'd have to pay, and a baptism he knows is in blood. 

Because according to this Alan, the fragmented psyche that inhabits the skin of his brother, the only way to save your soul is to sell it. 

The only way to earn your freedom is to give it up. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

"You didn't fit in, Alan." 

Alan knows this. He's felt it in his bones all his life that he had the one shot and there was no starting over. Outside of his niche, there's nowhere, and there's no sense arguing it. That first wave of anger had time to pass, and the sadness inside him hadn't yet turned in the hollowness that would blind him later. Prompting him to ask why, even if in the end, he knows it ultimately won't matter. 

"I've been this way for a long time," David says. He pulls out a smoke and lights it with a faded Bic, slipping it back into his chest pocket and out of sight. David glances at him from the corner of his eye, assessing. "That hotel fell in '06." he continues, taking a drag. The cherry glowed red, momentarily glinting off his stubble. 

Their last big hunt, they were gone for two days. Alan expected to come back and find everything locked up, parents too stoned to have opened the store, but the lights were on. When he walked in, the sweet-rank odor of reefer ballooned from behind the counter where he spied his parents, half-alert in the folding chairs next to the television. 

A man stood with them, hunched in a navy hoodie under an old leather jacket, smoke rolling. He wasn't their normal dealer, but the man passed the joint around to his mother and they smiled, dazed, at something the man said. 

Alan didn't recognize him then, but there's no hood covering his face now. Crouched beneath the pier, black jeans pulled tight against his thighs, he says, "I knew it would be you." 

David leans forward, tilting on his feet to extinguish his cigarette just far enough that Alan catches the stretch of scarred wings on David's back. He can see it clear as day in the darkness under the pier and with David still beside him. It's a different David, a different light, but it's all in front of him melded into one. 

David meets his eye. The doppelgänger with the flayed chest floats in his vision like a movie reel then vanishes, filed away into memory. David's raised eyebrow is all that's left. One raised corner of his lips, as if this entire meeting is a gift that Alan won't learn the potential of until later. 

"Have you fed?" 

He can feel the heat and taste the salt of Edgar's skin, the slow grime of the day accumulated. A small, tiny cut he can't remember making oozed blood between his lips, blood that makes his own pound almost louder than he can bear. 

Alan snaps to with eyes slipped half-mast, mouth open, breath tugging over his sore, swollen teeth. 

"No." 

David's grin, the light in his eyes. David knows, not only what happened, but that Alan can't _not_ feed. The crazier he gets, the more danger he puts his brother in. David knows he'll sacrifice himself for Edgar's safety. 

More than Dwayne's cruel streak. More than Paul's easy going nature that racked up more kills than any of them with his ability to never give a second thought, rocketing from murder instantaneously back to sunshine and bouncing curls. Alan's martyrdom was dangerous. So dangerous that he'll climb the ranks in no time, just keeping Edgar safe, and with him on top, David's safety is guaranteed. But it isn't safety that David wants. 

David's been around a century, and sometimes good things come from safety, but what he wants is to stack the deck. The cover of darkness. The freedom of loss. The righteousness of calamity. The sweet, glowing taste of chaos. Building lives from scratch, carving a name from ashes. Fresh blood spilled. And the assurance of knowing, always, _always_ , he's on top, beyond reach, and in control. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

When Edgar finds his brother outside staring at the sky like it simultaneously holds and owes him answers, he knows Alan will be out for the better part of an hour and no amount of talk can drag him away. The carnival had shut down for the night and a few stars faintly outshone the streetlight. 

This time, Edgar sits down next to him and mirrors his slump, forearms on his knees as Alan continues imploring pale light millions of years too late. Alan's breath smells of whiskey, and Edgar shifts a foot around searching for the clank of glass at their feet. When he finds it, though he hates the spice of it, the cheap burn, he takes a few slugs in quick succession. 

He tries to see what Alan sees, the fascination with the undead spirit of a star burnt out before ours was even formed, but finds his eyes only grow heavy and heated while his brother watches the sky turn, infinite worlds that he isn't a part of. 

Later, Alan lets his breath be stolen by countryside stars. He'll drive to the middle of nowhere, and he'll get out and prop himself against a front tire, lean his head back, and lose hours until he can't tell if it's tears or yellow overtaking his vision like a reptilian third eyelid. 

In these moments, he wants the salt tears taste of Edgar's mouth so badly, irrationally and with such ferocity, that he rips his palms to shreds with his nails. The taste soothes his dry throbbing mouth, and the drag of rough skin is both too much and not enough. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

"Edgar, I haven't seen you in _years_..." 

"That doesn't matter." The words burst out too fast, clipped, cutting Sam's rebuttal short and obscuring any chance he has of following it. There's no room for arguments or explanations or Sam clearing his name. 

What Sam doesn't realize, what Edgar knows too well, is that his ghost hasn't left yet. Edgar has been running all this time, but he hasn't escaped. Five years, and Sam thinks it's been too short, but he's pined all this time. For Sam, there's been some glimmer of hope on some horizon, _something_ that Sam can do or be, an opportunity, a _world_ , left for him if he would just take it. 

And Edgar? Edgar's been running. Five long, terrified years, and because the ghosts he's been harboring have never left his side, what he's waiting for is the end. Sam's appearance has delayed it. 

When he thinks about it, the end, he can feel his mind give. Long fingers curling around his cerebellum, lifting it into a precarious balance. He can feel those same ghostly fingers card through his hair, brush his face, and he aches for something more substantial. 

What he wants is oblivion. The rest is only echoes. But what he needs is the weight of his brother's hands keeping him from the ether. 

When he found Alan in the hallway that morning, he still remembers the thin aching lines of his brother's legs sliding onto the bed as he coaxed him to take the day off, and thinks maybe he should have known something was wrong even then. 

Then he thinks back to Alan's fingers sliced on a boxcutter not long before, blood flaked around the mouth of a bottle of whiskey just a few cents more expensive than their parents would have turned up, and he knows. 

He was so stupid. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

Sometimes when Edgar is complaining about having to knife the burnt bread out of their unplugged toaster, or some other small crisis normally involving something money could fix, Alan's chest aches with the need to quiet him. He'll catch Edgar mid-sentence and spider his long arms around his shoulders, snapping him against his chest all quick as a punch. 

This time, there is no crisis. All Alan knows is that he needs his brother. 

Alan is burning up, feverish, and before he has time to process what's causing the ache in his chest that demands his brother's presence like the day's first cigarette, he has Edgar pinned against him with long spidery arms linked across his shoulders. 

But then when Edgar's hands come up to grasp his back in a familiar hug, Alan feels Edgar's breath huff against the side of his neck. He feels his hair ruffle by his brother's exhale and suddenly is aware of the musky smell of Edgar's own unkempt hair, finds his face turning toward it, and the burning feeling in his chest cranks up a notch. A thin run of sweat starts from his temple, and his brother makes a startled noise as his back hits the wall outside the bathroom door. 

Alan's breathing increases, then the stubble on his jaw is dragging across the barely more than peach fuzz on Edgar's, and his teeth and lips catch on the curve of Edgar's mandible. 

"Al--" His brother's voice is frantic, can feel as much as sense the tightening of his shoulders and the twitch of his arm muscles, and presses more fully against him to stop him from moving. 

His hands aren't touching him. This has nothing to do with touch, but, _oh_ , can Alan feel sweat beading across his forehead when his brother's heart rate speeds in panic. Edgar swallows reflexively, nervously, then he's moved to his neck, more soft slide of teeth and suction and hot huffs of breath that fan back in his face. 

Edgar's hands come up to Alan's chest, turning his head and trying to push him off, but Alan threads his own hands between his brother's arms and knocks them away. One hand comes up to Edgar's face, holding right under the jaw, as he tugs the skin between his teeth, chasing it when he lets go. His mouth feels swollen, gums tingling like he wants to roll his brother's knuckles between his teeth, like the pressure might sooth the pounding-ache of his body. Instead, he's mesmerized by the salt of his brother skin and tastes with every swipe of his tongue the metallic tang of blood just beneath the surface. 

"Alan!" He's moving again, ready to raise his hands to Alan's shoulders and push. Alan, though, is back to nipping and biting, trying to quiet the vibration deep in the roots of his teeth, and suddenly there's a taste on his tongue so clear, so undeniably his brother, that the ache in his chest stills and his body hums. He makes a noise low in his throat and he sucks the broken skin back into his mouth, teeth still sliding and catching, tongue roving over his abused skin for what he's sure will fix him. 

Edgar's hands make it to Alan's shoulders just as there's a pain in his neck and Alan groans. Edgar cants a hip, and shoves with everything he has. He thinks for a moment Alan will be right back on him, but Alan stays, looking glassy eyed. 

"What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?" Edgar is shaking down to his fists clinched at his sides, and though he never wants this situation to repeat, his blood is boiling at having to physically get his brother off of him. He doesn't even want to know why the last half minute of his life happened to be what it was. Witches, voodoo, curses. He doesn't know and he doesn't care. Just wants to launch his fist at his brother's face, the brother who raised him and has always been a little off but never _this_ off, and maybe flush his cigarettes just to be extra clear. 

Then he actually looks at Alan and knows immediately something _is_ wrong. Alan is drenched in sweat, his skin waxy, and even his mouth drained of color. Edgar suddenly forgets that he's angry. 

"Alan? Are you okay?" His brow furrows for a different reason and he takes a step closer to his brother. But Alan's eyes start to clear and he takes his own horrified step back, shaking his head and making a run for the stairs. 

Edgar washes his face and checks the damage to his neck, heaving a sigh of relief that except for a single mark, there's only a little discoloration that'll disappear entirely in the next two days. He stopped shaking, but is still running ideas through his head, worried his brother has fallen victim to some weird mind control or some other supernatural fate they haven't yet encountered. 

Alan's now the one that's shaking. He thinks he has an idea what's going on, and the sickening lurch in his stomach isn't helped by the delayed realization that he's hard. 

He puts a dent into the downstairs paneling with his fist. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

Every time Sam knows he's gone, ditched town again, he calls every book store, every hole in the wall thrift shop until he gets a lead. Later he sucks it out of Alan's brain like some demented vacuum just to avoid the fallout of mentioning Edgar to him. They call it catatonia in some circles--a selective mutism of the soul where the only interaction he craves is with a phone book and the ever-growing collection of numbers carved haphazardly into the inside surfaces of Michael's bedroom furniture. 

Zoe knows Edgar--Sam used to know it in gnawing suspicions, but now he feels it in every raised hair on his body, every crawling inch of his skin. But she doesn't know Alan--this he feels in the nervous throb of his gums. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

David stands shoulder to shoulder with him, looking absently up and around with hands jammed in the pockets of his jacket. Alan knew his face back then. Knew the confidence of his walk, the long jacket trailing behind him like it existed specifically to follow. Alan doesn't have to know the David that stands next to him today to know there's a reason for everything. 

David looks at him sidelong, claps a hand to the back of Alan's neck and squeezes. Two fingertips trail under his collar, just barely a whisper. 

And just like he has a reason, David has a price, and it feels like fingertips brushing down his spine. 

"You have to trust me." 

David says it heavy with weight, like anchors tie it to the ocean floor. As if once, buried deep and so far in the past, David had a conscience and circumstance bore him away from it, blew wind into his sails and carried him out to sea. 

As if Alan's life wasn't lying in pieces in front of him. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

He sees her curves and thinks of excess. Of money spent on cheap diner pancakes. He thinks of things he can't afford and things he can't obtain and things that'd be wasted on him anyway. Sam's elaborate engravings on their old wooden stakes. Of sympathy. The comics he'd find in his truck some nights. The blanket she gifted him when she saw the ratty old thing he drug from home, as if there's some world in which Edgar has a future. As if his entire existence wasn't a crypt and his body just hadn't figured out how to quit moving. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

"A job and a contact. I don't take personal calls." There's not quite the force behind it that there should be, that she feels like he was going for. It's such a quick dismissal, and it makes her wonder, not for the first time, what he's hiding from. 

"He's called before," she says. 

Edgar stares at her, and this time his voice is level. "Business calls." 

"Do you not have friends? Family? Did you not leave _anybody_ behind? Because he _knows_ you. He _knew_ he would find you here--" 

"What did you tell him?" This time, it's an accusation.

"What? _Nothing._ I didn't even tell him I knew you, I just listened to him, and that's not the _point_." The point is that there's someone out there looking for him for the right reasons, and she thinks that maybe that could save him if he'd just let the battles clear from his eyes long enough to see it. But of course, it would be too easy for this man to see that somewhere out there, there _is_ a constant, even if he's never going to let that be her. 

He shakes his head and a revelation shoots through her, leaving her frozen mid-motion. "He calls the shop too, doesn't he?" 

Zoe always thought some kind of trauma. Cigarette burns, broken bones. She never thought love, but she should have guessed. Edgar wasn't broken; he was mauled. 

He looks away, jaw clenched, furious. No resignation here now. 

_"Edgar? Edgar, is that you? Listen, buddy, I need to talk to you. It's about your br--"_

_It came out in a rush but he still listened a beat too long before hanging up._

_"Price too high, huh?" His boss asked from the doorway. Edgar still had one hand on the phone._

_"Eh," Robert shrugged, already turning back to the sales floor. "What can you do?"_

"I'm not here," he spits. "I haven't been here, I'm not here now, and you don't know me. Not to him, not to anyone. They state a job and a point of contact. That's it. No personal calls, no information." And then for just a moment his voice changes, "I can't afford to be found." 

\- 

\- 

\- 

One thing Alan learns quickly is no one knows where David is, but he appears in his head sometimes and fucks him over quite regularly. David smells of leather and sinks into the membrane of every functional brain cell Alan has left at the most inopportune moments. 

It takes the better part of that first year for David to actually fuck him. Months and months of grooming, until Alan knew there was a bottom line somewhere and his skin hackled (not always unpleasantly) when he turned his back. That first time, David's taken him to the middle of nowhere, a peace offering without the peace, too little alcohol and the night sky. 

_You have to trust me,_ he thinks. Every clench of David's fist, every scrape of nails or teeth, Alan knew could just be some elaborate foreplay ending in his death. David could tear him apart. David can feel tension radiating from him. Alan swallows nervously, throat working and David's breath ghosting against him, teeth bared in a threat he can _feel_. Alan's heart trip hammers. 

David nuzzles against his neck, whiskery hair dragging coarse across his skin. David's open-mouthed exploration. Those plush lips curled like smoke against him, and when David grips his throat and David's teeth sink into him, Alan's voice spills out rough and shaky. David levers his fangs, stretching the punctured skin, making Alan cry out but it's fucking _exquisite_ how quickly it goes to his cock. 

David's teeth pull out, and then it's _suction_ , sloppy sucking kisses like David can pull out his soul, replace it with something else. Fangs punch through his skin again and again, soothed by swipes of tongue that have Alan's eyes fluttering. When David pulls off of him with a mouth full of blood like the parasite he is, there are five different sets of puncture wounds stinging and leaking down his neck.

David feeds it back to him, blood dribbling between their lips slowly. David winds his other hand in Alan's hair and tugs. He thrusts his tongue against Alan's before slitting it on Alan's already elongated teeth, and Alan has to fight to swallow against the pressure on his throat. And, _oh_ , it's good, someone else's blood, the same blood running through his veins, he's molten and blissed out nursing from David's bleeding tongue. David's thigh rocks once just a little too heavy against his junk. There's maybe, somewhere, something to say for the pain of it that's excruciating in all the right ways, but when David's nail breaks the skin of his neck, Alan bites through that perfectly curved upper lip almost involuntarily and the noise David makes isn't pain at all. 

David wants him to beg. Cloud his head so badly he'll sink straight to his knees, take David's cock, thick and heavy, into his mouth. His balls _ache_ with it. And he wants to run his tongue from Alan's thighs on up, blood, sweat, and come exploding on his tongue in a dizzying combination, wants to latch on and _suck_ because this is a hunger he hasn't indulged in since the boys, but this isn't about intimacy. This isn't about fairness. This is about possession. 

David flips him without warning, presses him too roughly against the car door and he has to bring his hands up to keep from face planting against it. David grinds his hips, letting him feel it as he pops the button and shimmies Alan's pants down his thighs. Alan hears the click of a cap opening and-- _God, he should have known better, should have ran when he had the chance,_ but there's the taste of blood in his mouth and he can smell it sweet and cloying soaked into the neckline of his shirt, and the weird thing is, this close, some things cease to matter. 

Anymore, he always feels _this close._

Alan flinches when David thumbs against his hole, body contracting like it could close in on itself, but he's hard, too, still. The slick feels cool against his skin until David finally slips in to the first knuckle. He switches to two fingers. They push in, pull out, stretching the rim, brushing him _just right_ to where he struggles not to press back. The heat flushes over him in waves, the blood--David's blood--flowing through his veins is on fire. Then David lines up and pushes into him for real, slow, so that by the time he bottoms out, Alan's gasping and cursing. 

It doesn't take long. David fucks into him hard, voice _cold_ , cold against his ear. Filthy. David's hand rakes up under Alan's shirt, and his fingernails gouge just deep enough on the way down, hot and slow. Alan groans, back arching, and David's blood soaked hand wraps around him, pumping him quickly. Alan's fingers scratch the metal as he lets go. David's fingers smear sticky, bloodied fluids down Alan's mouth and throat as he does. The taste is on Alan's tongue when he comes down, a different kind of lifeblood he wasn't aware he'd want to devour, and he wipes it off with his sleeve before he can give David the satisfaction. 

His clothes are ruined, stiff, when he pulls everything back where it needs to be. When he shoulders past him, trying to put some distance between them like there should have been to start with, he's hit with a wave of lust and vertigo so strong he nearly doubles over. But this time he feels it brush against his mind like an outside force. Just as soon as it came, it passed. He can feel his stomach start to sink before he even turns around. David locks eyes with him, and Alan feels that same heat, more subtle this time, curl around him and dissipate. David is fucking with him. 

David, copper around his mouth but far less ruined, smirks. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

Garlic. Holy water. Egg. 

Three ingredients to make a cocktail the three of them dreamed up nearly a decade ago, back when the three of them still meant Sam and Alan instead of _the ghost of who I used to be_ and _my dead brother._

When he drags in, thankfully spared the otherworldly slime that's still lingering from his last kill and regrettably not spared the sheer exhaustion that permeates his entire life now, there's a few hours left until dawn. Headlights flash at just the right angle to temporarily blind him and shoot a spike of pain deep into his skull. 

He's too old for this shit. This stupid 3 AM drag racing. He cracks the last egg into his glass and throws it back before he even looks at it. 

Then, the rough slide of **something** down his throat, and he's bursting out the front door with raw egg white and the contents of his stomach slipping through his fingers as he tries to clear the steps. 

Edgar shambles back in, tripping over the last step and slamming back into the refrigerator, leaving bile prints next to the gore. When he turns on the faucet to rinse his hands, his stomach gives an unsteady lurch and he turns it off before he can rinse his mouth and start another fit. 

He moves aided by hands on the counter, through force of will shedding his heavy boots. He can still see headlights over the hill, steady then pulsing as they crest, not helping the insistent throb low in the back of his head. He slings the blanket from his own bed across his shoulders and drops still clothed into the spare bunk. 

As soon as he hits, face tucked in the end of the blanket, his mind drifts between the thin pattern to the musty, dry smell of their old stockroom. He scents wood shavings and fresh stakes so clear he can taste them, and there's a sudden bloom of familiar cologne and the memory of a warm hand pushing the limp, sweaty strands of hair from his face, slipping to the back of his neck, and like a cub in the lion's jaws, he falls asleep. 

In the kitchen, there's blood spider-webbed in the glass, thin runs sticky down its sides. And beneath the steaming mess that broke the salt circle lies the tiny, misshapen head of a fetal chicken. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

Sometimes, the times Sam wasn't so angry afterwards that he could rip Alan apart with his useless human teeth, Sam could find comfort in the routine. There were nights that Sam could coax Alan into sharing his bed with no real effort. In a cocoon of blankets, tight and claustrophobic, his own body temperature could almost make it seem like he was with a real person and not an ink-shadow. Sometimes he even appreciated the normalcy of it, Alan's corpse-cold limbs tangled up with his as if this wasn't a means to an end. No matter that Alan would complain later. No matter that Sam still woke up in the morning wanting to die. 

Sam has entered into a world of exile where he's no longer a threat to anyone. Alan turns him anyway, just to prove a point. 

\- 

\- 

\- 

"A hunter..." 

Sam doesn't mean to, because really, he's stopped caring, but he's shaking anyway. Tiny little vibrations. Simple, uncomplicated resonance while the world around him tremored like earthquakes. 

Alan, though, is calm. 

Sam watches Alan's cold face, the steady lines of his shoulders, and is appalled by the blank look. The slack jaw. The way his mouth moves ever so slightly as his tongue absently traces a canine. 

David is perched in the window like he belongs there, smiling like Sam doesn't realize everything that's wrong with this picture. The same window Michael, then Star, then Alan clamored into like a never-ending parade of apparitions he never needed to see like this, coming in to whirlwind his life around some more. 

What Sam has learned in all this time is that Alan has lost the capacity for emotion. Everything to Alan is a means. All he cares about is the end. The coldness that's always radiated from Alan has changed and morphed, and it's not so much frost anymore as it is daggers. 

"You have a type, Alan." 

When Alan doesn't turn, doesn't rise to the bait, David's smile falters. His voice pitched low to carry some weight Sam can't fathom, he says, "You know, you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." 

And what Sam knows right now is that no matter how patient or slow Alan can seem, he's quick and he's cunning and he's more dangerous than any vampire they ever fought. 

"You were never a hero, and you're not Batman." 

Alan uses his most bland voice, but he saw Alan tense. David laughs even if it isn't funny, and Sam can't begin to believe he knows why, but a light dances in David's eyes that for a moment makes him the boy Michael must have seen. 

"I was talking about you, Alan." 

"I'm not either," Alan's voice tumbles out slow, level, but too soon. 

"Ah," David draws it out like he's finally touched gold. "I guess you turned in your utility belt with your mortality." 

There's danger here now. David's eyes sparkle with a different light, and the gleam of his teeth makes Sam think he'll shake right out of his skin. David hasn't changed. He never will. 

"Turned it in?" 

There's a hysteria just under the surface of his voice. One of grandpa's owls found its way into Alan's hands. Sam can hear its ribs crack, see its brittle bones slice the skin between his white knuckles. Alan's nostrils flare with his breath. Sam hasn't seen him angry like this since he was human. 

"Turned it in," David mocks. "You gave it up, Alan. Was it worth it?" David's voice has pitched again and carries across the room like gunfire. Before Sam knows what's happening, Alan is moving into David's space with clenched fists as if he can do something about it. 

"Do you think your demons will die with me, Alan?" David laughs, that same sparkle in his eye. 

"Do you think you'll be free?" 

\- 

\- 

\- 

"Sam?" 

"I did what I had to do." 

"Was he a threat?" 

What he wants to say is _What happened to you? Where have you been for five fucking years? **How did you turn into this?**_ But in the darkest recesses of his mind, he already knows. 

Edgar's chest seized like he might vomit, but instead what came out were words just as rancid and stinging as bile. 

"What do you think?" 

Alan shrugs and lights a smoke with the same faded lighter he nabbed as restitution. 

Edgar didn't have coldness in him. Not like Alan whose poison seeped out like a cracked eggshell and enveloped him in a cloud of darkness. 

Alan knew he made the calls, let it out of the bag that someone had switched sides. But he knew Edgar didn't really intend for him to get killed. 

He had him excised like so much dead flesh, not acknowledging the malignancy that remained, refusing to touch the tumor at the heart of it. Like a teratoma that has all the individual components of a living being, but isn't. More a cancer than a parasite. 

Alan would narrow down his world, funnel everything Edgar has in, defile and regurgitate it, until the only thing Edgar will have left is his brother. Until the only thing he can possibly crave is Alan.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to NorthChill for making me clean this up and post.
> 
> //
> 
> Always up to chat! Inbox me!


End file.
